Definitions of War Violence and Genocide: Narratives of Survivors from the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The aim of this study is analyzing the narratives of survivors of thewar in northwestern Bosnia in the 1990s. The focus lies on analyzing interviewees’ description of war-time violence and also analyzingdiscursive patterns that contribute in constructing the phenomenon“war violence”. Analysis shows that the interpersonal interactions thatcaused the violence continue even after the violent situation is over.Recollections from perpetrators and those subjected to violence of thewar do not exist only as verbal constructions in Bosnia of today.Stories about violent situations live their own lives after the war andcontinue being important to individuals and social life. The crimescommitted in northwestern Bosnia are qualified as genocide accordingto indictments against former Serbian leaders Radovan Karadžić andRatko Mladić. All interviewees in this study experienced and survivedthe war in northwestern Bosnia. These individuals have a present,ongoing relation with these communities: Some live therepermanently, and some spend their summers in northwestern Bosnia.Institutions in the administrative entity Republika Srpska (to whichnorthwestern Bosnia now belong administratively) deny genocide,and this approach to war-time events becomes a central theme infuture, post-war analysis of the phenomena “war violence”, and“reconciliation”. Therefore, it is very important to analyze the politicalelite’s denial of the systematic acts of violence during the war thathave been conveyed by the Hague Tribunal, the Court of Bosnia andHerzegovina onWar Crime, and Bosnian media. The narratives in myempirical material seem to be influenced by (or coherent with) therhetoric mediated in these fora. When informants emphasizeextermination and the systematization of violence during the war, theyproduce and reproduce the image of a mutual struggle on a collectivelevel. The aim of this struggle seems to be that the described acts ofviolence be recognized as genocide